CF Card Question - DPChallenge Forums

Pentax SMC DA 18-55mm f3.5-5.6 AL WR

07/26/2006 09:46:01 AM · #1

The local Staples has 1GB SanDisk 1GB cards on sale for $25 and I was thinking of getting one for my weekend trip to the Adirondacks. I've done some looking, however, and cannot find a published read/write speed for the standard cards.

My other cards are both the Ultra II high-speed line (512MB each), and what I really want to know is, are the standard cards so much slower that I'm going to want to tear my hair out? I'll be doing mostly nature/landscape photography this trip, so I don't need blazing speed - but I also don't want to be waiting forever.

After this trip, it will probably live in my S50, and I'll use the Ultras in the Rebel - but if I were to need it on a big shoot, I'd have it.

I'd feel more comfortable buying it if someone would share their thoughts.

drz01

Pentax K50

07/26/2006 09:52:53 AM · #2

Most modern CF cards are faster than your camera. Where you man notice the difference is in reading from a cardreader.

Canon EOS-20D

Tamron SP AF 28-75mm f/2.8 XR Di for Canon

07/26/2006 09:53:04 AM · #3

Check this... //www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=6007-7699

eschelar

Canon EOS-7D

Canon EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS USM

07/26/2006 09:55:01 AM · #4

Sandisk is notorious for a few things.

#1 not posting the speed of their cards

#2 charging higher prices for the equivalent speed in other brands

#3 generally being a poor bang for the buck.

Their worst offenders are the ones that don't say Extreme or Ultra or anything on them. Who knows what you are getting.

You will probably be OK with a 45x or something, but it's also entirely possible that these are 20X or 30X cards.

Where I live, I've not seen Sandisk put a competitive speed/price on any of their cards...

I've got a Transcend 1GB 45X CF, Apacer 4GB 100X CF, Ridata 1GB 66X SD, and iPro 2GB 170X SD as well as a large number of other cards... They all work fine and were all cheaper than equivalent Sandisk offerings.

The Apacer keeps up with my 30D's 5FPS pretty well. I can do a pretty decent burst in full size JPG.

The 4GB Apacer was around 100 bucks US. There are faster cards now for the same 100 bucks USD equivalent around here. I think I saw a 4GB 140X the other day.

If you only want to spend 25 bucks, why not, but if it were me, I'd spend 30 bucks and get a better brand like Ridata, Adata, Transcend or Apacer.

Better yet, go grab a high speed 4GB card and use that instead, throwing your old Sandisk in the S50.

Message edited by author 2006-07-26 10:02:17.

07/26/2006 10:00:44 AM · #5

Holy crap! The Ultra card is rated at a write/read of 4.820MB/s & 5.750MB/s, while the Standard card is only 981KB/s & 1.068MB/s

Guess that settles that. WAY too slow to really be useful.

Thanks mk, we'd all be lost without you :-)

Tamron AF 28-300mm f/3.5-6.3 XR Di LD Aspherical IF for Canon

07/26/2006 10:03:38 AM · #6

Originally posted by eschelar:

Sandisk is notorious for a few things.

#1 not posting the speed of their cards

#2 charging higher prices for the equivalent speed in other brands

#3 generally being a poor bang for the buck.

You will probably be OK with a 45x or something, but it's also entirely possible that these are 20X or 30X cards.

Where I live, I've not seen Sandisk put a competitive speed/price on any of their cards...

If you only want to spend 25 bucks, why not, but if it were me, I'd spend 30 bucks and get a better brand like Ridata, Adata, Transcend or Apacer.

I've used SanDisk memory for years, so they're the only ones I'm familier with. I don't know which of the other brands are good and which are "cheap", so I've stuck with the one I did know. I've always been happy with SanDisk, but I have to agree:
-They stink at publishing useful info about ANYTHING
-They are overpriced

The $25 deal sounded great, since I'm rather broke and this is a last-minute purchase to make sure I have enough memory for the trip. I will definetly take a look at the other brands you've listed and see how they look. Thanks!

Prof_Fate

07/26/2006 10:30:42 AM · #7

Sandisk is a big name brand memory card, and i've never heard of any issues with them. they advertis a lot and are teh most seen in retail stores - things that raise prices (but may have no effect on quality).

Regular speed cards are pretty cheap and about 1Mb/sec (good for a rebel 300)
Utlra 2 are about 80x (those numbers are confusing to me as well) but it works out to 8-10mb/sec (20D/30D)

Extreme 3 are the fastest, 120x or so. Not sure the Mb/sec on these as they are way faster than what i need.

I have oe of the ultra 2 cards (2Gb) and the rest are Kingston 50X 2Gb cards. The Ultra 2 is faster (palyback in the camera is where i see it most, particularly after a burst of shots). But the Kingston cards were cheaper - i could get 3 of them for the price of 2 sandisk ultra 2 cards, so I chose capacity over speed - I don't shoot sports so I figure it won't matter - often, anyway.

Lexar cards with WA seem to perform good, but have had compatibility issues in the past with canon cameras. I'm not willing to risk it.

You can often find rebates on sandisk cards at the big box stores - just watch their sunday circulars. all my regular speed 512 cards were sandisk bought this way.

edit to add: I see Sandisk now has an Extreme IV card, 40Mb/sec.

Message edited by author 2006-07-26 10:32:27.

pix-al

Canon EOS-5D

07/26/2006 10:50:57 AM · #8

Thats is a nice site MK!

I use the Kingston Elite Pro cards. They can be had for a good price in the UK if you google around a bit and come out around middle in those speed tests... Don't know if you can get these in the US?

coolhar

Canon PowerShot Pro 90 IS

07/26/2006 11:37:57 AM · #9

Originally posted by eschelar:

Not posting speeds for there cards (such as 40x, 80x, etc.) is actually a plus in my book. Those figures really don't mean anything, and are often used by inferior cards to make buyers think they are as fast as the major brands. Pricing is all over the map for SanDisk because they are sold in so many different ways. I don't think that, on the whole, they are more expensive than other major name brands. A few years back they were the cutting edge industry leader with a product that has now become commonplace. Many imatators have now put out products after SanDisk did all the market pioneering. I've never heard of any recalls of their cards, but have heard of two by their closest rival, Lexar. And they consistently score at, or very near, the top in objective comparison tests like the ones done by Rob Galbraith. SanDisk is a quality brand name yet to incur any scars. They are the one by which all others are judged so maybe they deserve to cost just a little more than the pretenders. I usually don't like to pay top dollar if I can find a bargain but I am comforted to know that I couldn't buy a better CF card when I get a SanDisk Extreme III. Pay a few dollars more to buy the best and save all the research and worry.

eschelar

Canon EOS-7D

Canon EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS USM

07/26/2006 01:05:21 PM · #10

Not trying to argue, but the above post mentioned that the non-speed-labelled cards often test around 8 times slower than the high end variants...

I've got a fairly decent number of smaller and larger cards (up to around 11 now and will probably get another 4GB or 8GB CF within 2006 and a 4GB SD too) and each time I buy, I come across the same thing... You can buy a cheap Sandisk which is several times slower than the similarly priced competition, or you can get one of the local Taiwanese brands...

I never really found most of those data card evaluation sites much use because they are always weighted for the US market availability (nobody around here uses Lexar... even more overpriced, slower and buggy) and are often in the neighborhood of a year or more out of date... Heck last year around June I was seeing 133X and 140X CF cards at the local computer shows and 200X MMC cards..

It's worthwhile to note that while Sandisk is often touted as an industry leader and the originator of flash memory, I don't believe that this is actually the case. Samsung is the world leader for production and development of today's flash storage media, and almost every card out there has memory made by them.

The only real difference is the controller chips. Just like MPG ratings for cars though, these are always going to be overstated.

The above link shows how uncompressed RAW files transfer significantly faster, sometimes as much as double the speed of .jpg's.

an X is supposed to be 150Kbps and I believe it usually refers to the read speed which is not generally as important as the write speed.

To be honest, most cards don't really perform anywhere near their claimed speeds (unless you consider 5MB/Sec to be near 9-10MB/sec), but they are actually based on something...

Therefore, it's probably not worth your while to really get finnicky about differences like 45X to 52X or anything like that and your camera probably doesn't write fast enough to come near the speed of a 140X CF, but you will notice a slow card that performs badly...

A few months ago, a friend of mine bought a Sandisk 1GB for three bucks USD equiv less than a Ridata 66X. The Sandisk wasn't labelled. He found out later that it was a 20X card.

Labelling is good IMHO.

dleach

Canon EOS-20D

Canon EF-S 17-85mm f/4-5.6 IS USM

07/26/2006 01:18:48 PM · #11

Sandisk has a new CF card called the Extreme IV.

//www.tgdaily.com/2006/07/20/sandisk_extreme4_cfcard/

coolhar

Canon PowerShot Pro 90 IS

07/26/2006 02:15:19 PM · #12

Originally posted by eschelar:

Not trying to argue, ...
Labelling is good IMHO.

Labeling would be good if it meant anything, but it doesn't. It only serves to confuse a buyer.

kirbic

Canon EOS R5

Canon RF 24-70mm f/2.8 L IS

07/26/2006 02:30:25 PM · #13

I'm in agreement with harvey. In general, you can trust the speed label on a card about as much as you can regard megapixels as the sole indicator of camera image quality. It's a marketing number, and it will be skewed to the most idealistic case.
Even Sandisk, whose cards I use exclusively, publishes only the highest number. Their new Extreme IV cards are billed as transferring up to 40MB/s, which is true (Rob G's card-to-computer test showed 38 MB/s using the Sandisk FireWire 800 reader)...
- If you use their reader
- If you have a FireWIre 800 port
- If your hard disk subsystem is up to it
- If you're asking about read speeds. I doubt you'll see those speeds on write.
Bottom line, look at actual performance data, and buy based on what you need. I'm currently using 2.0GB Sandisk Ultra II cards, and the only minor issue is the transfer time to the 'pooter. I'd like to move up to 4GB per card, but would want faster transfer speeds for that capacity. For now, though, even with the large RAW files from the 5D, I'm sticking with what I've got.

jmsetzler

Sony Alpha a6400

Sony 16-50mm f/3.5-5.6 (E-mount)

07/26/2006 03:36:55 PM · #14

For $25 you can't go wrong. Get one. If you can't use it, donate it to someone who can. I think you will find it will work OK for most things.

eschelar

Canon EOS-7D

Canon EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS USM

07/26/2006 11:05:08 PM · #15

Originally posted by coolhar:

Originally posted by eschelar:
Not trying to argue, ...
Labelling is good IMHO.

Labeling would be good if it meant anything, but it doesn't. It only serves to confuse a buyer.

Please read my post.

Labelling does mean something. It may not be a super-accurate definition of actual speed, but it WILL give you a rough idea of the performance level you can expect. Chances are VERY good that a 150X card is a good deal faster than a 20X card. Although as has already been stated and evidenced above, there is nothing substantial to say that a 100X is faster or slower than an 80X. Further, whatever difference there might be is probably not hugely significant because when transferring 1GB, the difference between 4minutes and 5 minutes is really not a big deal.

A 150X card will probably be faster than your camera and easily falls into the category of 'fast enough'.

A 40-60X card will probably be as fast as or slightly slower than your camera and falls into the category of 'possibly fast enough, but if speed is an issue buy a faster card'.

An UNLABELLED card will probably be a slower card (I've asked about them on a number of occasions, even as recently as a month or so ago and found numbers anywhere from '4X' to '30X', all of which mean - fairly slow).

The post above listing unlabelled sandisk cards as actually being 8 times slower than their labelled counterparts.

My point is that while the numbers might not be the most pertinent for real-world in-camera performance, they do give an indicator of what the card can do in ideal conditions, therefore they do mean something.

Last time I checked, a Toyota Tercel has a speedometer that goes to 180km/h. It probably won't go that fast, but that's the number on the speedometer.

My little 50cc scooter has a speedo that goes to 100km/h. You'd be lucky to get it over 70.

Want to take a rough guess which of the two above modes of transport actually goes faster though?

My bicycle has a digital speedo that goes up to 480MPH or something like that... (you can see why I prefer to bike to work ;)

So the numbers don't mean anything, that's true, but I don't spend every day on the race track with someone timing my commute on a stopwatch.

Likewise, with 4-5 minute transfers for 1GB, it's pretty unlikely that anyone else is sitting at their computer counting the seconds, watching them flick by.

Canon EF 24-105mm f/4.0L IS

07/27/2006 08:20:34 AM · #16

Well I certainly learned a bit about cards from all this. Thanks again.

Just to update, I went out last night and bought the card, agreeing with some who posted that, 1GB for $25 is too good to pass up. If it turns out to be a total dog, it'll end up forgotten at the bottom of my bag. At least now I think I can make it through a weekend in the Adirondacks without running out of memory.

scalvert

Canon EOS-5D Mark III

07/27/2006 08:52:53 AM · #17

Hope it works out for you. The 300D Rebel is pretty slow to begin with, so a slow card won't make a huge difference. That said, you can get a 150X Ritek Pro 1Gb card for $26 shipped or a 60X 2Gb PQI card for $23 after a small rebate. Both are name brands that Rob Galbraith has tested in his database, and either would leave a standard SanDisk card (blue label) in the dust.

Message edited by author 2006-07-27 08:53:57.

Canon EF 24-105mm f/4.0L IS

07/27/2006 09:00:41 AM · #18

Originally posted by scalvert:

Added those sites to my favorites, thanks scalvert! Wish I had seen those last week, I'd have ordered them in time.

scalvert

Canon EOS-5D Mark III

07/27/2006 09:05:28 AM · #19

There's little point in adding those sites since the prices change frequently (the PQI rebate ends today), but THIS is always a good starting point for buying media cards.